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Nietzsche: Truth and Consequences

May 23, 2011

When my wife returned from Paris recently, she brought with her a new book of exceptional importance: a selection of the last two years of Nietzsche’s letters prior to his breakdown in 1889—the years that coincide with the writing of his short, radical books “Twilight of the Idols,” “The Antichrist,” “The Case of Wagner,” and “Ecce Homo.” It’s a revealing read, in many ways, not least in the revelation that these books were published at Nietzsche’s own expense, and that they, and his work overall, got virtually no attention, with a few notable exceptions that kept the philosopher from utter despair. (He spends lots of time corresponding with professors and critics who were inclined to write or lecture about him, and took pride in the enthusiasm that Brahms expressed for his work.)

Nietzsche lived in a sort of provincial isolation, passing, according to the season, between Switzerland, northern Italy, and the south of France; he suffered from ill health, enduring digestive problems and headaches, and calibrated his diet and his travels to marshal his energies for his work. But he kept up with the politics of the day, and nothing exercised him more than the rise of German anti-Semitism (in which his sister and brother-in-law, who had started a German colony in Paraguay, were active). In these letters, he writes, “I have to defend myself tooth and nail so as not to be lumped in with this anti-Semitic rabble”; he lambastes fanatical German nationalists and militarists, and even expresses—to his sister—the desire that “anti-Semites be compelled to leave Germany” for her colony.

Yet, writing to a friend in 1888, he speaks of his grand new project, a book to be called “The Overturning of All Values,” which, he writes, “if it is understood, will divide the history of humanity in two.”

After this, many things which were, until now, free, will no longer be free: the reign of tolerance will, through the judgment of values of the first rank, be reduced to pure cowardice, a weakness of character. Being Christian—to mention only one consequence—will thereafter become indecent.—A large part of this upheaval, the most radical that humanity will ever know, has already made great advances with me.

Well, he was right. The book in question was never completed, and of course it’s not his fault, but the reign of tolerance did end; whatever element of mercy and humility Christianity brought Germany evaporated; and, in the name of courage, strength, and a furiously proud intolerance, the country unleashed an organized and systematic slaughter on an unprecedented scale. From the grave, the philosopher may well have cried out, “This isn’t at all what I had in mind”; but philosophers, no less than politicians, generals, and, for that matter, everyone, are subject to the wicked caprices of unintended consequences.